Dr. Elsie Inglis. Lady Frances Balfour

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      ‘When I myself began to study medicine, no one could have been more enthusiastically encouraging, and even through the stormy and somewhat depressing times of the early career of the Medical College for Women, Edinburgh, her faith and vision never faltered, and she helped us all to hold on courageously.’

      In 1891 Elsie went to Glasgow to take the examination for the Triple Qualification at the Medical School there. She could not then take surgery in Edinburgh, and the facilities for clinical teaching were all more favourable in Glasgow.

      It was probably better for her to be away from all the difficulties connected with the opening of the second School of Medicine for Women in Edinburgh. The one founded by Dr. Jex Blake was the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, and the one promoted by Elsie Inglis and other women students was known as the Medical College for Women. ‘It was with the fortunes of this school that she was more closely associated,’ writes Dr. Beatrice Russell.

      In Glasgow she resided at the Y.W.C.A. Hostel. Her father did not wish her to live alone in lodgings, and she accommodated herself very willingly to the conditions under which she had to live. Miss Grant, the superintendent, became her warm friend. Elsie’s absence from home enabled her to give a vivid picture of her life in her daily letters to her father.

‘Glasgow, Feb. 4, 1891.

      ‘It was not nice seeing you go off and being left all alone. After I have finished this letter I am going to set to work. It seems there are twelve or fourteen girls boarding here, and there are regular rules. Miss Grant told me if I did not like some of them to speak to her, but I am not going to be such a goose as that. One rule is you are to make your own bed, which she did not think I could do! But I said I could make it beautifully. I would much rather do what all the others do. Well, I arranged my room, and it is as neat as a new pin. Then we walked up to the hospital, to the dispensary; we were there till 4.30, as there were thirty-six patients, and thirty-one of them new.

      ‘I am most comfortable here, and I am going to work like anything. I told Miss Barclay so, and she said, “Oh goodness, we shall all have to look out for our laurels!”’

‘Feb. 7, ’91.

      ‘Mary Sinclair says it is no good going to the dispensaries on Saturday, as there are no students there, and the doctors don’t take the trouble to teach. I went to Dr. MacEwan’s wards this morning. I was the first there, so he let me help him with an operation; then I went over to Dr. Anderson’s.

‘Feb. 9.

      ‘This morning I spent the whole time in Dr. MacEwan’s wards. He put me through my facings. I could not think what he meant, he asked me so many questions. It seems it is his way of greeting a new student. Some of them cannot bear him, but I think he is really nice, though he can be abominably sarcastic, and he is a first-rate surgeon and capital teacher.

      ‘To-day, it was the medical jurists and the police officers he was down on, and he told story after story of how they work by red tape, according to the text-books. He said that, while he was casualty surgeon, one police officer said to him that it was no good having him there, for he never would try to make the medical evidence fit in with the evidence they had collected. Once they brought in a woman stabbed in her wrist, and said they had caught the man who had done it running away, and he had a knife. Dr. MacEwan said the cut had been done by glass and not by a knife, so they could not convict the man, and there was an awful row over it. Some of them went down to the alley where it had happened, and sure enough there was a pane of glass smashed right through the centre. When the woman knew she was found out, she confessed she had done it herself. The moral he impressed on us was to examine your patient before you hear the story.

      ‘A. is beginning to get headaches and not sleep at night. I am thankful to say that is not one of my tricks. Miss G. is getting unhappy about her, and is going to send up beef-tea every evening. She offered me some, but I like my glass of milk much better. I am taking my tonic and my tramp regularly, so I ought to keep well. I am quite disgusted when girls break down through working too hard. They must remember they are not as strong as men, and then they do idiotic things, such as taking no exercise, into the bargain.

      ‘Dr. MacEwan asked us to-day to get the first stray £20,000 we could for him, as he wants to build a proper private hospital. So I said he should have the second £20,000 I came across, as I wanted the first to build and endow a woman’s College in Edinburgh. He said he thought that would be great waste; there should not be separate colleges. “If women are going to be doctors, equal with the men, they should go to the same school.” I said I quite agreed with him, but when they won’t admit you, what are you to do? “Leave them alone,” he said; “they will admit you in time,” and he thought outside colleges would only delay that.

      ‘This morning in Dr. MacEwan’s wards a very curious case came in. Some of us tried to draw it, never thinking he would see us, and suddenly he swooped round and insisted on seeing every one of the scribbles. He has eyes, I believe, in the back of his head and ears everywhere. He forgot, I thought, to have the ligature taken off a leg he was operating on, and I said so in the lowest whisper to M. S. About five minutes afterwards, he calmly looked straight over to us, and said, “Now, we’ll take off the ligature!”

      ‘I went round this morning and saw a few of my patients. I found one woman up who ought to have been in bed. I discovered she had been up all night because her husband came in tipsy about eleven o’clock. He was lying there asleep on the bed. I think he ought to have been horse-whipped, and when I have the vote I shall vote that all men who turn their wives and families out of doors at eleven o’clock at night, especially when the wife is ill, shall be horse-whipped. And, if they make the excuse that they were tipsy, I should give them double. They would very soon learn to behave themselves.

      ‘As to the father of the cherubs you ask about, his family does not seem to lie very heavily on his mind. He is not in work just now, and apparently is very often out of work. One cannot take things seriously in that house.

      ‘In the house over the Clyde I saw the funniest sight. It is an Irish house, as dirty as a pig-sty, and there are about ten children. When I got there, at least six of the children were in the room, and half of them without a particle of clothing. They were sitting about on the table and on the floor like little cherubs with black faces. I burst out laughing when I saw them, and they all joined in most heartily, including the mother, though not one of them saw the joke, for they came and stood just as they were round me in a ring to see the baby washed. Suddenly, the cherubs began to disappear and ragged children to appear instead. I looked round to see who was dressing them, but there was no one there. They just slipped on their little black frocks, without a thing on underneath, and departed to the street as soon as the baby was washed.

      ‘Three women with broken legs have come in. I don’t believe so many women have ever broken their legs together in one day before! One of them is a shirt finisher. She sews on the buttons and puts in the gores at the rate of 4½d. a dozen shirts. We know the shop, and they sell the shirts at 4s. 6d. each. Of course, political economy is quite true, but I hope that shopkeeper, if ever he comes back to this earth, will be a woman and have to finish shirts at 4½d. a dozen, and then he’ll see the other side of the question. I told the woman it was her own fault for taking such small wages, at which she seemed amused. It is funny the stimulating effect a big school has on a hospital. The Royal here is nearly as big and quite as rich as the Edinburgh Royal, but there is no pretence that they really are in their teaching and arrangements the third hospital in the kingdom, as they are in size. The London Hospital is the biggest, and then comes Edinburgh, and this is the third. Guy’s and Bart.’s, that one hears so much about, are quite small in comparison, but they have big medical schools attached. The doctors seem to lie on their oars if they don’t have to teach.

‘Feb. 1892.

      ‘I thought the Emperor of Germany’s speech the СКАЧАТЬ